For Want of a Warm Embrace
by Lisa Telramor
Summary: Rio Hikari grew up knowing she would have a son, and one day that son would be Krad. She is Hikari, a failing line, but her son will be prepared for his birthright. Playing with the thought that Rio was alive long enough to raise Satoshi. Extra chapters are Satoshi perspective, and snippets of Daisuke's childhood.
1. Handle with Care

_AN: So. In the manga, Kosuke mentions that Hikari Rio died 15 years previous to canon. That would be about equal in time to Satoshi's birth. That said, we also see her in a flashback from Satoshi's point of view, appearing to embrace him as Krad's wings sprout from his back. Which is correct? Was the flashback actually some sort of metaphor? Who knows. But Daiki mentions that Rio's mother disappeared right after giving birth to a daughter. If Rio didn't actually die, but 'vanished' like her mother to raise her child, it goes to reason that Satoshi could have been a lot more messed up from a childhood of Hikari training that we don't see sort of like how Daisuke had all that Niwa family training. Where did Satoshi learn so much about his family if there was no one to teach about it for two generations? How did he know so much about Krad if both previous family ancestors were women who died right after having a baby? This is playing with the concept that Satoshi did know his mother and was raised by her most of his life._

* * *

Hikari Rio examined the infant in her arms. He was too small, born prematurely. The pregnancy had almost been too much for her as well. It was not the first time she had felt her family was cursed in more than one way.

She had had a son though, the first son in two generations. If her mother were still alive, she would have been pleased—or as pleased as she ever got. His birth was something to be proud of. He, more than she or her mother, would have a chance at catching Dark. He also would have a short life, even for a Hikari. Her grandfather had died at twenty-one, driven insane by Krad. Her own mother had died at thirty four, when Rio was fifteen. At twenty, Rio knew her days were numbered. It had been a long time since a member of the Hikari family had lived to reach old age.

The infant scrunched up his face and whined. She didn't feel much of anything to hear its cries. She wondered if something in her was broken. Maybe it was one more thing about the Hikari that was wrong. The infant flailed one arm, seeking her warmth. His fingers were thin with perfectly defined nails. Artist's hands.

She listened to him whimper and fight for life for a few moments longer before guiding him to her breast. The midwife had emphasized the importance of skin contact. It felt strange in a detached way. But then any contact felt strange.

"What will you name him?" the midwife asked later when the infant was asleep again.

"…Satoshi." Rio believed in the power of names. If they were going to finally win, any little hope, even one infused in a name would have to work. "With the 'rei' from 'reiri.'" Wisdom and intelligence would serve him well.

~o~

As far as the world was concerned, Hikari Rio had died giving birth to a son. There was too much to accomplish in too little time for her to keep her place in the world, so, like her mother before her, she left it and retreated to a Hikari family home.

For a baby, Satoshi was remarkably quiet. He cried when he was hungry, but was silent the rest of the time, even having soaked through his diapers. Rio carried him from room to room, returning the home to what she remembered from her own childhood. The magic in the artworks throughout it thrummed through her, touching her at a deeper level than the bundle in her arms. The child had a spark too, but it was just that; a spark, nothing more, nothing less, something that could be extinguished too easily for her to give it much notice.

She stood in the center of the work room at the shelves old paint and clay that would have to be gone through to determine what was still usable and what had to be thrown away. It had been almost a decade since she had set foot in the room. There was likely nothing left. Unfinished on an easel was a painting of a woman. Its face was left unfinished, the potential life never given completion. Rio had painted it herself with her mother as its subject. Hikari Shinobu had had long, straight brown hair. Rio didn't take after her at all. She had no idea who her father had been. Her son resembled her more than he did his father already. She wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not, or if it simply was something that was, like so many other parts of her life.

There was the old temptation to complete the painting. She had not lifted a brush in five years.

When she cleaned, the painting found its way into the storage room with other incomplete works. Unlike her mother, she had decided she wouldn't finish what she made so she wouldn't have to kill it.

~o~

Most children, someone had told her once, grew up on fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Satoshi grew up with family history as his stories, lists of artwork and their abilities as his fairy tales, and stories of Krad and Dark's eternal battle instead of lullabies. He still didn't cry often once he moved past infancy. Rio didn't know if this was because she had done something right, or wrong, or if it was Satoshi's personality. He listened raptly to anything she told him, round, blue eyes focused on her no matter where she was in the room.

At almost one, he was walking already and had better motor skills than she had been led to believe a child his age would have. He still hadn't spoken, but he seemed to understand most of what she said.

Rio paced the library, looking for books to tell her what she needed to know to prepare him for his fight. His eyes followed her, back, forth, back, forth. She stopped. He could walk. He could grasp a pastel and smear it across a piece of paper. He could tell when she was speaking to him versus speaking to herself or telling a story. He was old enough to start teaching.

He didn't interact with other children well the few times she had taken him to a public space, but Rio didn't interact with other people well either.

She stooped in front of him. Satoshi blinked at her and held up his hands to be held. Rio kept watching. His hands went down.

Her mother started her with clay and pastels and cheap, washable paints. She touched Satoshi's hand and his fingers wrapped around her forefinger.

"Today you're going to learn something new," she said. "Do you understand?"

Of course he didn't answer. But he didn't get the unfocused look in his eyes he had six months earlier when she talked to him either. Rio gathered him in her arms and his thin fingers clasped tight to her shirt. He could walk now, but he was slow, so very slow, so she would carry him for a little longer. It meant he got contact too, which the books said was important. The books didn't seem to get much right about what to expect with a child, but there had to be some truth to them if it was repeated in all of them.

She took Satoshi to the workroom and set him at a lap desk. He let go when she pulled away and watched her gather up a lump of reconstituted clay and a cup of water. Rio tried to remember what her mother had told her when she started on clay, but she couldn't remember back that far.

Settling the lump on the desk, she broke it into two pieces, guiding Satoshi's hands to one of them. "Today you're going to play with the clay. Touch it, squish it, do whatever you want with it." And then they'd move on to shapes later. She stuck her hands into her lump to demonstrate. Her fingers pinched a curving wave of clay, crushed it back, formed a cup, squashed that to form a cat. Satoshi watched the shapes form and then smacked his hands into his own lump.

It oozed between his fingers. He smiled. It was an expression she didn't see on his face often.

Rio let him smack and spatter clay for the better part of an hour. He didn't seem aware of how to use his hands together to move the clay, but she would teach him. There was so much to learn and so little time.

~o~

"Kaa-san." At three, Satoshi was speaking. And reading. And already painting with a fine motor control that Rio had not had until she was seven. She had long since decided the books were useless and gotten home schooling manuals instead. "Kaa-san," Satoshi repeated in his soft voice. He tugged on her sleeve.

Rio looked up from her book—art history, it seemed it was always art history these days, trying to create a comprehensive list of every Hikari work that had survived the cultural reformation that her mother had missed listing. What time was it? Had she missed a meal time again? "Yes?"

"I finished the paintings, Kaa-san." Satoshi held out two carefully balanced acrylic paintings and the watercolor beneath it. They were scenes of the garden with its overgrown flower gardens and one of the playground she took him to once a week in the name of socialization.

Rio took them and studied them with a critical eye. The subject matter was clear in each one and they showed a growing understanding of light and shadow. The playground in particular, with its towering equipment from a child's perspective casting foreboding shadows. She felt a spark from that painting. The other two were too flat to hold that spark, though there were echoes of possibility in the loops of wisteria choking the trellises. The technique was still poor though, as was to be expected. The brush work too sloppy, the colors lacking shades and tints. The promise was there though. Satoshi could be the strongest Hikari artist in centuries in a few years.

"Better," she said finally. She set them on the table away from her books. "What did you do wrong?"

Satoshi frowned and stared at his paintings. "They don't look much like the garden. I can't remember everything from when I saw them."

"And the other?"

"The jungle gym isn't really that big?"

Rio felt a stab of disappointment. Satoshi was brilliant in so many ways, picking up new things like a sponge, but it always was a disappointment when he couldn't see where she was leading with her questions.

"Well, then what did you do right?"

Satoshi looked even more serious, tiny face screwed up in concentration. Rio had a disorienting moment where she remembered his newborn face making the same expression when he needed to be fed. She brushed it aside. It was three years past unimportant.

After a long moment Satoshi touched the watercolor painting. "This one feels…more. The contrast?" He glanced at her and she let nothing show on her face. "The contrast of the shadows and the lighter parts makes it…more…more…"

"It gives it more emotion," she relented. "The light brown wood is in contrast with the shadows. Combined with the extreme perspective, it gives the piece a feeling of menace. The playground is backlit by the sun, blocking it out and looming over the point of view."

"Oh."

There was still so much to research, but… Satoshi's shoulders tucked up toward his ears the slightest bit. He looked like he wanted to snatch the paintings back and hide them away. "We can go over color theory and contrast again after lunch." It was already running late for lunch anyway. "Then I want you to do brush stroke exercise."

"Yes, Kaa-san."

Rio patted him on the arm awkwardly. She held him sometimes still, at night for a bit when she told him stories of the Hikari before bed or on the rare occasions he came to her in the middle of the night to flee shadows he never spoke about. It was always harder to touch him in the light of day without an excuse to do so. "You're improving quickly," she said.

Satoshi gave her a small, shy smile.

~o~

Satoshi spent one month in school with his age mates. At five he was far beyond most elementary students and already reading books with kanji that the local school didn't teach until the last year of middle school. In that month, the homeroom teacher expressed concerns that Satoshi did not play with the other children, nor did he seem interested in any of the activities the others were involved in. Rio knew by the end of that month that traditional schooling was not going to work at the rate expected. A placement test put his knowledge level at the second year of middle school. She withdrew him from the school and bought more textbooks.

It was never clear what Satoshi thought about the brief time in school or her decision to remove him from it.

At any rate, he managed to pass a high school entry exam with high marks less than half a year later.

Rio let him attempt to attend school again. From the way he worked through a year's worth of material in half the time, she knew he must feel even more out of place than he had been in first grade.

~o~

With Satoshi at school, Rio worked and Rio painted. She swore she wouldn't paint, but it was a compulsion now, easing the anxiety that growed with each passing year. Most she left incomplete—gaping blank spots in a landscape or missing faces in portraits. But she was a Hikari and the lure was still strong to create.

Satoshi came home a month before he was to graduate high school, eight years old and already more controlled than Rio knew herself to be. He watched her paint, her hands shaking with adrenaline and the spike of magic pulling from her core. On her canvas was a thousand butterflies, their discarded pupal cases littering the bottom of the image. Or the top. It could go either way, and it had her caught in its making like no artwork had ever managed. With each brush stroke, she leached the emotions she couldn't express into the canvas.

Satoshi watched, wide eyed and wary from the doorway. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours.

Rio placed the last stroke and felt life take. She could feel the embryonic consciousness form in its core, the too cautious reach of magic outward to feel its surroundings, and horror crashed down on her.

Satoshi stepped forward and touched the edge of the canvas where the paint had dried. "It feels…"

"No." Rio knocked the artwork from the easel. It crashed to the ground, smearing the wet paint. The sense of self coming from the painting was growing. She was dimly aware of Satoshi taking a step back as she grabbed a palette knife. "No. This wasn't supposed to… I shouldn't have…"

The painting reached out, fear and confusion bubbling off it in a mental assault that—shit, she'd made an empathic painting, how? Why?—made her hesitate to bring the knife down. It wasn't supposed to exist. It shouldn't have been painted, no, no, it shouldn't have been completed at all. She took a breath and stabbed. Fear spiked from the painting along with a dizzying feeling of pain as the canvass ripped.

It felt like stabbing herself.

Behind her, Satoshi made a choked whimper. Rio willed the damnable painting to cease existing with all the desperate, undirected magic in her. It stopped.

There were tears on her face, tears she didn't remember shedding, nor having shed tears in years. The easel and painting were a wreckage before her.

"Why?" Satoshi asked. He clutched his arms around his middle, eyes round in terror. "Why did you kill it? Why…?"

"It was a mistake." Rio tried to breathe evenly and regain that center of control that usually filled her life, but it was still shattered.

"It was only just finished—"

"And was already gaining a strong consciousness," Rio said.

"It could have been sealed!"

"And sealed would have been better? If it turned out to be dangerous and harmful? Seals are not foolproof. Seals break down, and the art breaks free, Satoshi." Rio took a breath. Another. Another. Her hands stopped shaking. "Someday you might create something that could harm you. Will you seal it?"

"I…" He couldn't tear his eyes from the canvas and the smear of colors along the workroom floor.

"And Dark. What will you do when you face the Niwa family? Try to seal Dark away?" Rio couldn't help the anger that entered her voice. Story after story, from the day he was born, but he wasn't _listening_. The Hikari created monsters, and Dark was a monster that had gotten away. Dark had killed them before, and Dark could kill her son. And Krad would tear her son apart every inch of the way with their family's curse, and he could very well be the last Hikari. "Do not forget what I told you about the cultural reform, Satoshi. Dangerous artwork cannot be allowed to live."

"But…" He pulled his eyes away from the mangled canvas. "It hadn't even decided if it was dangerous or not."

"It shouldn't be given that chance." Rio tossed her brushes in a cup of water before moving toward the trash bin by the wall.

She was halfway through peeling canvas scraps off the floor when Satoshi spoke again.

"If Dark can't live, should Krad?"

Rio didn't answer for a long while. She got a sponge and cloth and set to cleaning the mess of paint. Satoshi waited like he did when she was distracted by reading for her to respond.

"It's different," she said finally.

"How?"

"Dark and the Niwa family aren't under our control, but we're Hikari and Hikari artworks are our responsibility. We have to keep existing to fulfill our responsibility."

"…by killing them?"

"By eliminating any threat they might become," Rio corrected. She tamped down her emotions, putting them back in the boxes they'd sprung from. Control. A Hikari had to remain controlled. There was either control or madness and she knew which she preferred to exist in. Her expression smoothed and her voice evened. "If Dark is caught and destroyed, Krad will follow. They are two halves of a whole and call out to each other. If Dark appears, Krad will eventually follow. If Krad appears, Dark can't be dormant for long."

"And if Dark were truly destroyed?"

"In theory, Krad would fade out of existence. He strives to best Dark not for the reasons our family has, but to prove himself better and more real than his other half." Some of the paint had dried tacky on the floor. It would take effort to get it off. She would do it later, or perhaps leave it where it was as a reminder. "Krad believes if he destroys his other half he will become the true Black Wings. But neither Dark nor Krad has ever succeeded in destroying each other. No one knows for sure what would happen. But killing their tamer suppresses the cycle for that generation faster."

Satoshi stared at the specks of green and gold and blue and black where they stuck in the grooves of the cement floor. "In Grandmother's generation there was a Niwa thief, right? Dark appeared?"

"Yes."

"But Krad couldn't appear. How could Dark appear if there wasn't a way for Krad to be there?"

"Dark appears for every male in the Niwa line," Rio said, "like Krad appears for every male Hikari," but her mind was weaving theories and wondering if what hopes she had held were falsely founded. Were the theories postulated by her mother and grandfather wrong? Would destroying Dark not destroy Krad after all? At any rate, she had to believe that it was the truth. It was the only fragile thread of hope in keeping the family line going.

"Is there any way to keep Krad from appearing?" Satoshi asked. He looked uncomfortable and for the first time Rio wondered what he took from the stories she told him. Did he view them as warnings, knowledge, or perhaps premonitions of what he could expect in his own future?

"Don't form attachments," Rio said, thinking about the journals she'd read. "Krad responds to strong emotions. Emotions toward people in particular can call him out. So don't get close. Keep your emotions to a minimum and you will last longer."

Satoshi's young face was grim as if he was accepting a death sentence. In a way he was. Rio did not envy him even if he could fulfil the Hikari role far better than her. "Krad's appearance is…the beginning of the end…isn't it?"

Other mothers would probably offer reassurance. Hope. Rio had always believed that the harsh truth was better than false hope. "Unless you destroy Dark or manage to destroy Krad, you will not have much longer to live. A decade at most. It will depend on when the Niwa heir comes of age and the gap between your ages in part, but only one host of Krad has lived more than a decade past his manifesting."

Satoshi digested the information and took a breath. He let it out slowly, his face closing off. He pushed what he felt into boxes like she did and clung to a semblance of inner calm. His needed work, but he was learning. "Teach me to control Krad," he said. "Please."

Rio set down the rag. This was the first time Satoshi had specifically asked anything about Krad. Usually he showed interest in the artworks and ancestors instead. "I have journals for you to read," she said. There was a shelf she had set aside full of books involving Krad's previous hosts. Satoshi would need that knowledge.

Face still blank, he crept forward to grip a hand on her sleeve like he did when he was much younger. It struck her that he was still only eight years old, a child to anyone else that looked at him. But there wasn't a real childhood for a Hikari. Rio let him hold her sleeve.

"There are still techniques you need to work on before you graduate." And leave for college. She supposed she should feel sad about the thought of him moving on to an adult stage of life, even if it was premature. It was just one more fact though, and facts didn't come with emotions very often. "From here on out, you will not complete anything you create."

"Yes, Kaa-san."

Rio let him hold onto her sleeve until she'd cleaned as much of the mess as she could without digging into the divots of cement.

~o~

Satoshi wrote reports, not letters. They broke down his schedule each day, what he had learned about the Hikari each week, and his progress in his personal training. Rio read them with her morning cup of coffee and felt vague flickers of approval with each sign of progress. Satoshi was reaching beyond her skill in art, and his educational knowledge was passing her own, but it felt as it should be. She had been raised to raise him, and seeing him reaching some manner of success was a success for her as well. It almost made up for the lack of progress in finding a clear method to eradicate Dark or Krad that would actually stick.

There were paths to take and possibilities, but they were only hypotheses built on hundreds of failures from generations long gone. Half of those hypotheses were made by men succumbing to madness. Rio had given up finding anything concrete, but she had hoped to find something plausible that was more than a stop-gap measure.

Satoshi returned on breaks, and he seemed almost like a stranger now, growing centimeters outside her observation and seeing sights without her at his side. He was thoughtful now, introverted in a different way than before he left for university. They circled each other, like repelled magnets, not quite sure how to coexist now that something had shifted in the once careful balance between them.

He asked less questions now. The ones he did ask held more purpose, all directed toward knowledge on Krad, and soon she didn't have more information to give.

At college he learned art history outside the Hikari family body of works, getting perspective of how his ancestors had fit into a larger whole. Alongside it, he took criminology and psychology, things that would be useful in capturing Dark and pinning down the Niwa family for their years of theft. Rio wondered if that was where the new direction of questioning had come from, and its careful pointed wording that had been absent before.

It was time to start reaching out to old connections and reaffirming old ties. Strings would need to be pulled to place Satoshi where he needed to be.

In her mother's old files was contact information for the Hiwatari family, a family with deliberate police ties. Once they had been part of the Hikari family, dedicating themselves to the law to aid the Hikari cause, but that had been generations ago, long enough that the ties of blood were all but unacknowledged. Hiwatari Yuutaro had helped Hikari Shinobu in her effort to catch the last appearance of Phantom thief Dark. His descendant would have to do the same for her son.

~o~

Rio felt even more dispassionate toward Hiwatari Mamoru than she usually felt upon meeting a person. He was too interested, too intrigued at her 'return from the dead' for her liking, and entirely too enthusiastic about his family's ties to the Hikari. That said, she found his son far more interesting. At twenty-four, Hiwatari Kei was making a name for himself among the police force and looked to be in line for a promotion. Mamoru predicted he would make commissioner in another year when he retired.

Irritating. Her plans hinged on having someone at a level in the police force to pull strings, and if Kei was passed over then it would be impossible.

"Don't look so worried," Kei said when his father left the room to fetch more tea. He looked entirely too casual, relaxed on his cushion cross-legged rather than in a formal seated position. His eyes behind the glare of his glasses had a smug confidence that Rio simultaneously hated and liked. "I'll receive the position and everything will go smoothly."

"I'm sure," she said coldly.

"But I wonder," Kei said leaning forward, "what you expect us to have at stake in this?"

"The chance to capture Dark Mousey, the thief that has mocked both the Hiwatari and the Hikari for generations is not enough?" Rio lifted an eyebrow.

Kei snorted. "But I could do that without a Hikari. My family has served the Hikari family for, as you have said, generations. But what do we get out of this arrangement?" He smiled, just as sharp as his eyes and Rio felt grudging respect and a flash of interest, buried as soon as she felt it. "Too Hikari to abandon familial ties, but not Hikari enough to know anything about its secrets."

"Is that your trade?" Rio asked. "Knowledge for your assistance?"

"Would you give it?"

The Hikari library and its collection of art had been passed down for generations only through the main line. But the main line only consisted of two people whose lives would last only so long. If Satoshi lived to have a child, he likely wouldn't live long enough to raise it. And she doubted she would be alive that long either.

"I would," she said. "But to your father."

"Oh? On what grounds?"

"On grounds that should anything happen to me, he is the closest relative remaining who would be left to raise Satoshi to majority."

"And this would pass along to me if anything happened to you and my father?" Kei leaned back, studying her.

Rio nodded once. "But in the event that this happens, it is _Satoshi_ who would control the extent of what you have access to."

"Letting the minor have run of things, then?" Kei asked sardonically.

She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. She had very few nice smiles and she wouldn't waste one on him. "Letting the Hikari control Hikari knowledge. Besides, Satoshi is more mature than you." She let the satisfaction of that last jab curl in her chest as Mamoru returned with more tea and his son was forced to swallow any less than kind words. The spark of interest bubbled up again at the restrained frustration in Kei's eyes, but Rio knew better than to pay any notice to it. He was someone to watch out for and outmatch. There was no room in her world for personal whims.

~o~

Rio thought it had to be dark irony that Mamoru died from a heart attack not three months later. Kei became commissioner at the age of twenty-five. It was blatant nepotism, but then that was the point. Access to Hikari knowledge and potential custody of Satoshi passed to Kei, much as she would rather it not. As it was, she controlled what he could learn so far. She left him a book about post-restoration Hikari artwork.

There was less dangerous information in that to misuse.

~o~

Rio had never been one for physical affection, but in the months proceeding Satoshi's thirteenth birthday and upcoming graduation, she found herself reaching out to him more and more. She blamed it on a combination of uneasiness for his future and a vague premonition that she wouldn't be able to do so much longer.

The first time she left her hand brush his shoulder as they passed in the hallway, he had frozen. Only in initiating contact now did she realize how little contact she had given before that Satoshi had not first reached out for.

"Why?" he asked toward the end of his winter break, sounding four again, not almost thirteen.

Rio looked at her hand on the nape of his neck and how Satoshi curled toward her, but still only allowed himself a hand gripping her shirt. There was still six centimeters between them, an awkward and uncertain space they didn't know how to cross. Rio let herself feel. Regret, largely, because she could not be a mother who supported and loved, but also sadness because she could only see things becoming more painful from here on. Lastly was affection. It was the hardest to let herself feel because it was the emotion she had been told to avoid most growing up. That hadn't stopped her from hurting when her mother died or growing attached to the son who was supposed to be a duty before a child.

"Indulgence," she said after the silence had grown into a chasm. "I wanted to and will not be able to for much longer."

"But why now?" Satoshi leaned forward until his forehead brushed against her side. He was tense under her hand.

There were explanations she could give—how she'd noticed a tremble in her hands, how she felt too old for thirty two, how she didn't believe she would live longer than her mother had, how she feared she had failed to prepare Satoshi enough despite doing everything she could think of to get to this point. Rio didn't give any of them.

When Satoshi hesitantly drew one arm up in a loose embrace, she leaned into the touch.

It felt nice. As foreign as ever, but nice.

~o~

"Someone called me their friend today," Satoshi said in a letter. In the last month of university the report-like structure of the letters had loosened to almost colloquial. "I have had five classes with this person over the last few years, but cannot remember having more than three, short conversations with them, and only regarding our shared class. Is this normal? I have avoided forming ties here outside of professional ones. I don't understand the need to claim an acquaintance as a friend, or even to move past acquaintances to be friends. The class we shared has ended now, though, so there will be no reason for our paths to cross again. You need not worry that I will form a useless attachment."

Rio turned the paper over in her hands. Did Satoshi understand how much he gave away just by mentioning the incident? Likely not. He would have trouble if anyone ever did manage to get close and try to see under the walls he put up. He wasn't as closed off as he believed himself to be or he needed to be.

Attachments could kill him.

She set Satoshi's letter aside and pulled a clean sheet of paper and pen out for her reply. "The Niwa heir has been located. Kei informs me that he is entering his second year of middle school. Preliminary reports show no sign of his skill, but the Niwa are good at hiding their strengths. He is your age." She paused and looked at the ink cutting clear lines of text on the page. His age had been unexpected. Somehow she had expected him to be younger or older. She had hoped younger, if only to give Satoshi a bit more time. Instead, there was less than half a year difference between them. It felt final. There was only one final descendant from each line left to carry on the feud. She kept writing. "This could be used to our advantage. You are the right age to fit in with middle schoolers to better observe him. I will look into enrolling you at the school. If you have any ideas, please send them along."

Rio frowned at her hand. The pen kept shaking in her grip. The doctors hadn't found anything wrong with her, but there must be something. She had had steady hands her whole life.

She bent over the letter again and started adding the information about Niwa Daisuke that Satoshi would need.

~o~

Rio sees the moment Krad awakens in her son. He is thirteen and it is too soon. He is in the workroom, and maybe that is the trigger, seeing the lines of half-finished paintings and the air of bitterness they contain, or the smaller all but complete works she has been making recently—but still not complete because she knows better, has always known better even if she occasionally backslides. Or maybe it is because he has painted her, only her face, but enough of her to trigger something in him.

Krad is brought by strong emotion. Rio is ashamed to say she does not know her son well enough to know what strong emotion would break through his trained self-restraint. She only knows the result, Satoshi screaming as his clothes ripple and his skin tears as wings force themselves free.

His eyes are terrified.

It is, Rio thinks, a bit late to awaken maternal instincts, but that's the only thing she can think to blame for why she embraces him as he twists and convulses from the pain. Satoshi's voice breaks, ragged from screaming it raw. His arms claw and try to wrench free like he's trying to flee his own body.

She feels the magic catch and flare in him, and then he is no longer Satoshi.

The body in her arms it too tall and broad to be her son. His hair is long and golden, and he looks like all the journals describe him—like an angel. But his eyes are cold, colder even than the apathy she and Satoshi adopt.

"Krad," she says.

"Hikari," he says. He smiles like a wolf, all teeth and promise of pain. "You are no longer necessary," he says. "Satoshi belongs to me now."

"Why now?" Rio asks.

Krad laughs and drags one hand through her hair before gripping the end. She holds stiff, boxed in by his bulk and wings. "I have always been watching and waiting." His free hand traces the line of her cheek. "You were the weak link in the end."

"Oh." Rio thinks of her mother as Krad's hand moves to her throat. She'd miscalculated. A child would be fond of the parent who raised it. She had tipped the delicate balance by reaching out to acknowledge feelings they should have suppressed to the very end. How bitterly ironic. Krad's grip tightens. Rio could fight. Her paint brushes are an arm's length away, all the weapon a Hikari has ever needed, but she is the liability. She is the hole in the plan who has compromised her son.

Krad's eyes narrow in triumph and he hisses through his teeth as his grip goes tight.

Rio closes her eyes and lets him.


	2. Follow By Example

_AN: A few short snippets of Satoshi after Rio's death._

Aftermath

Satoshi wakes in a hospital bed. He's been here before; not this room, but this hospital and it is the same scent of cleaner and the same off white walls and the same outdated equipment keeping track of heart rate and blood pressure. For once he isn't dazed from low blood pressure when he wakes up. He wishes he was.

Some part of him thinks _I want to throw up_ , but it's lost to the numbness taking over. There is an absence of emotion, a vacuum that can't last forever but he will cling to with every last shred of sanity he has. There is a foreign presence in his mind, as impossible to miss as a cracked tooth. It is more terrifying that, like a tooth, it is a part of his mind that was always there but he never noticed until it started to hurt. Krad is sleeping, a deep sleep, forced deeper by the void inside of Satoshi's heart.

 _"Suppress_ ," mother had said. _"Don't feel and he will sleep longer."_

But he's been in the hospital before, and Krad has come too soon and he knows what this means for him.

"It's my time already," he murmurs. He looks down at his hands and sees a flash of them wrapped around—no. The thought shuts down there. On the bed is a cross—a Hikari artwork, a lesser one with mild powers of protection, but nothing of note. It is not something he had had before…before. It occurs to him that he has no memory of how he got here. There are bandages around his torso and his back aches at his shoulder blades where the wings—his mind skitters away from the thought. Too soon to think about if he is going to remain in control. Who brought him here? How long a gap between what happened and waking? What had happened after?

He remembers screaming in his own mind and a body he cannot control. He doesn't feel any of the emotions he did then, none of the horror or pain or panic or hysteria. It's unsettlingly blank in a way that he has always tried to be but never actually managed.

There is a creak at the doorway and a man is there—Hiwatari Kei, a man Mother has mentioned in her letters and plans but whom he has never met.

"Ah," the man says with a politician's smile. "You're awake." He takes the seat across from Satoshi's hospital bed. "It's been a hectic few days," he says, answering the question of how long Satoshi has been unconscious. "There's a man hunt for someone about half a meter taller than you by the way. Tragic, and the police can't seem to figure out what the killer wanted."

"Why are you here?" Satoshi asks.

Kei laughs and it doesn't meet his eyes. "Ah, you see I'm your new father." He smiles, cool and impartial. "Rio made provisions in her will. From now on you will be Hiwatari Satoshi."

"Do I have no say in this?" Satoshi asks, feeling like he should be upset by this, or at least annoyed by the presumptions. He feels nothing at all.

"Oh, you could keep the name Hikari, but that might cause problems in keeping your cover once you're enrolled in Azumano middle school."

The plan is still in motion, then. It is strange for it to continue when it had always been Rio's brainchild. The methods to try and entrap Dark are Satoshi's own. His mother had not approved and had had a list of her own but there they had been divided. Satoshi's morals had never quite matched Rio's for all that she had raised him to think in the same narrow view that she did. She never knew how much university had changed his worldview. Or perhaps less changed than expanded and counteracted her conditioning.

Kei kept smiling. "You will be moving in with me of course, and bringing your things. I have room set aside for the Hikari library and galleries. A room for you to call your own as well, of course."

Satoshi cuts over him. "What happened to her body?"

Kei stops smiling. "It is inconvenient to cover the fact that a woman dead for fourteen years wasn't actually dead. She was given a Jane Doe status. I pulled strings and had her cremated so there is no way to confirm or deny that she was Hikari Rio." He cocks his head to the side. "Or were you planning something for her remains?"

"No." There is no family shrine. There is no mourning. There are no traditions to follow with Hikari dead. They were dead. Their art lived on. Except Rio had never finished any of her art, or if she did, she had killed it. When he was very little Satoshi had thought maybe she sealed it like the collection of Hikari artworks she showed him in the storeroom. The incident with the butterfly painting had shattered that impression and deepened his resolve not to give life to any of his own art because he didn't think he would be able to kill his work like she had.

"I suppose I'll have her ashes placed somewhere then. There is a Hikari family plot if I remember correctly."

Is there? Nothing of the sort had ever been mentioned in any reading material or by his mother. What happens to her remains doesn't matter. They were not her.

"Are you feeling well enough to leave the hospital? The doctors want to give a mental health screening before they discharge you, but I can probably put pressure on them to take you home with me as your new legal guardian."

Satoshi turns his focus back on Kei and his irritatingly confident body language. "No."

Kei blinks. "Of course you can stay longer at the hospital if—"

"I meant, no, I have no interest in living with you." Satoshi centers himself and levels a cold stare at Kei. "I do not need an adult hovering over my every move, and I have no intention of letting you have open access to anything the Hikari own."

"I could hardly let a thirteen year old child live alone."

"I could hardly live with a man I have only just met," Satoshi replies blandly.

There were gears turning in Kei's head. His eyes gleam with schemes and Satoshi wishes for a moment he could turn over and go back to sleep. He knows better than to assume he could afford to ignore Kei though. Mother's letters had told him that much. "How about we cut a deal?" Kei says. "We both know I could force the issue of you living with me."

"And we both know I hold control over the Hikari assets."

"Exactly." Kei nods, politician smile back on his face. "You can see where I am going with this."

Satoshi sighs. He needs Kei so he couldn't cut him out as much as he wanted to. In the eyes of the law, Satoshi is a minor no matter his life accomplishments to this point or maturity. It is accept Kei as adoptive parental figure or a high likelihood of being shunted into a foster system. Kei is the one who would arrange things to get Satoshi in contact with the Niwa heir and onto a police position to defeat Dark. In short, there is little he could do besides work out a deal. "My own apartment," he says. "Space for me and my belongings and certain Hikari artworks. In return you can have limited access to the Hikari library and can store what Hikari artworks I am not keeping with me."

"Unlimited supervised access and the requirement that you are seen regularly with me in public. We can't have people thinking I'm neglecting you."

Satoshi scowls. "Supervision was a given. I will consent to you borrowing books that I've approved for indefinite amounts of time." He pauses. "I am going to need access to police files eventually."

"And you'll get them eventually if you work with me when a task force to catch Dark is created upon his return." Kei smirks. "Access to all Hikari history texts."

"Access to post reformation texts," Satoshi challenges.

Kei scoffs. "I don't have to ensure that you end up in the same class as the Niwa boy. Surely the same school is good enough for you to observe him?" He lifts an eyebrow.

Satoshi narrows his eyes. He feels irritated, but it is dull and muted under the hollowness inside him. "Histories only. Only restricted access to any texts on artwork."

"That is acceptable." Kei waves a hand. "We can work out the minute details later when you are recovered."

"Fine." Satoshi wishes Kei would leave. His hands clench in the hospital blankets, brushing up against the cross. Satoshi unfolds one hand to touch the gilt-edged wood. "Did you leave this here?"

"No." Kei frowns. "You were found holding it and wouldn't let it go."

"Oh." He has no memory of it, not of finding it if he had in fact found it, or of Krad doing something that would lead to him holding it. He's never seen it before today.

Kei straightens his suit jacket and nods. "I can discharge you and you can return to your home for the night," he offers.

The thought of going back into the home he'd lived in his entire life is the last thing he wants. (Rio, closing her eyes in acceptance.) But he has no interest in living with Kei or remaining in a hospital room either. "Find an apartment quickly," Satoshi says.

"I can find something by the end of the week."

Autonomy

"I'm not yours," Satoshi said to the voice in his head as much to the man in front of him. "I will never be yours."

"Of course, Satoshi," Kei said with his ever present amused expression. He ruffled Satoshi's hair, releasing it from where Satoshi had slicked it back in an effort to look older. Fine strands fell in his eyes as he shoved Kei's hand away.

In the back of Satoshi's head, Krad stirred, sending out lazy, violent promises. He'd woken earlier that evening when Satoshi had been unable to quite deaden his anger. Kei was proving to be infuriating and tried Satoshi's patience and control constantly. "Why did I have to even attend that…event?" It was technically a fundraiser for the police force, but was more of a meet and greet of the who's who in Azumano and its surrounding areas.

"We have to establish you of course," Kei said, smooth and irritatingly sure of himself. "Now people know you exist and that you're my adopted son and protégé. When the time comes, no one will bat an eye when I introduce you to the police force."

"I highly doubt that." There had been far too much speculation going on just over Kei adopting him. It was like no one had anything better to do than gossip. But what had truly pressed Satoshi's buttons was how Kei kept _touching_ , like he was claiming something with every time he did so much as set a hand on his shoulder. Satoshi took off the god awful tie he'd put on that afternoon and tossed it on the back of Kei's pristine leather couch. It gave him a reason to put more distance between them. "I mean it. I'm not yours."

"Aren't you?" Kei smirked. He didn't say a word about how Satoshi stripping off formal clothing in his living room was messing up the pristine order of the room or how he had disrespectfully left shoes on only to kick them off on the living room carpet. Kei loosened his own tie and disappeared into his bedroom. "At any rate, they believe you mean something to me." His voice carried well though he didn't raise it much over a normal speaking level. "A few more of these sorts of events and everyone will just think I'm being a doting father when I sign you on to the task force."

Satoshi glared balefully at the other room and dug out the change of clothing he'd left behind. _We could kill him,_ Krad whispered with tempting bloodlust. _He's arrogant to think he owns a Hikari. Just call on me and I can turn that smirk to screams. You are mine and no other's._

' _I am no one's but my own,'_ Satoshi thought, letting go of anger until he was blank again, hollow. Krad laughed and settled back in the depths he'd crawled from, content to wait him out. Satoshi changed as quickly as he could and left his suit scattered across Kei's living room from spite.

"I'm leaving."

"Be careful on your way back," Kei said from his room. "It would be terrible if something were to happen."

Satoshi snorted. He was such an arrogant bastard.

"I want to borrow a book," Kei added as Satoshi opened the door. "Expect me sometime tomorrow."

Satoshi shut the door behind him without answering. Kei would do as he liked and Satoshi had very little ability to change that.

Expectations

The Niwa heir was painfully normal. He was perhaps even less remarkable than that. He was shy, he was friendly with most of his class but would be forgettable if he wasn't constantly doing something clumsy. He had one close friend, a Saehara Takeshi, a few less close friends, and a girl he pined over with painful obviousness. There was nothing special in his grades—average across the board—nothing special in his athletic abilities if his gym records were anything to go by, and if Satoshi hadn't looked up records and triple checked that this was the Niwa he was looking for, he'd have believed it was all some sort of cruel joke. There had to be something he was missing, so he settled in to wait for him to slip up, even if it meant that he had to endure public schooling all over again.

It was as tedious as he remembered.

It was less hostile than he remembered though.

"You should sit with us," some girl—Kanoda Mai if he remembered correctly from the class roster—said the second week of the new school year. "It's okay to make friends you know."

Satoshi never knew what to do with well-meaning people. Even less when they were well-meaning people that also gave him a once over in a way that said they found him attractive. (Hormones were to blame, but Satoshi couldn't say he understood why anyone found him interesting. He was purposely blunt and disinterested to discourage interest as much as possible.) Satoshi gave her a blank stare for a few moments because this was the third time she had asked and he had politely declined both previous times. "I have no interest in eating lunch with anyone," he said, being blunt since politeness hadn't worked. "Stop asking."

Kanoda looked like he'd slapped her. That was fine. He wasn't there to make friends. He didn't watch her go back to her friends. He was already watching Niwa again from the corner of his eye. Niwa's lunch went tumbling out of his hands as his friend Saehara threw an arm around his throat and Niwa did an impressive twist to keep it from being ruined. Perhaps not so normal? He added it to the notes at any rate. He should find a place to eat where no one would bother him. The roof could give him enough privacy and a decent angle to watch Niwa in the classroom if he invested in a pair of binoculars.

"Sorry!" Niwa said later when he almost tripped into Satoshi later that day running away from Saehara. For a brief second his hand brushed Satoshi's shoulder and that split second of contact had been the closest a Niwa and a Hikari had been in generations without trying to kill each other. Niwa smiled and bobbed his head in apology and ran off.

Some sort of emotion bubbled under his skin, but Satoshi ignored it. It was easier to ignore them since Rio died. Instead of lingering over it, he packed his bag as usual, and headed to the hallway that let him watch Niwa and Saehara as they made their slow way out of the building.

They were laughing, or more Saehara was laughing and Niwa was waving his arms with his face almost as red as his hair. How did Niwa manage? Feeling that much and having people in his life? Satoshi knew Dark wasn't quite like Krad, but he didn't know what the fundamental differences were. What was the catalyst to awaken Dark? And would such an emotionally vibrant person have the ability to reign Dark in once he was awake?

It wasn't Satoshi's problem though. He had to plan for capturing Dark. The Niwa were not the biggest problems to deal with. He watched just long enough for Niwa to disappear through the gate, reluctantly smiling back at Saehara, before he gathered his things. He had another night of research to do.

Lies

It is college all over again, but worse, because no matter what Satoshi says, Niwa insists "But we're friends right?" and Satoshi wants to shake him and scream that they can't be friends. They're enemies and a rosy view of the world is only going to get them both killed. He can't say it though. He can't let it break his balance any more than Niwa already has—who is he kidding, he is compromised, horribly compromised but he still has _some_ control so it isn't a wash yet—so he just shoves everything down, good and bad alike and hopes Krad chokes on the conflicting emotions in the cesspit of his soul.

A few conversations and non-hostile encounters do not make a friendship. Restraining Krad so he does not kill someone is not technically an act of friendship either, but it is a lot of effort to go through to protect the damn cause of Krad breaking free in the first place.

His track record is set back at zero. Dark is out and Krad is out and of course Satoshi can't keep it under control anymore because once Dark is present Krad will come no matter how much effort Satoshi puts in to keeping him out. (There are methods, self-sabotage among them, to keep Krad from being at full strength but it is a vicious cycle and rigorous emotional control only helps part of it.)

Why do people claim him as a friend?

 _You want to be his friend,_ Krad purrs, scathing. _You are pathetic, caring for the enemy._

Caring? Satoshi thinks Krad has an odd idea about caring, but it is true that Satoshi has a track record of unnecessary actions that better Niwa's health or safety, occasionally at the detriment of his own.

Niwa isn't afraid of Dark. In fact, he embraces his existence, and Satoshi wonders how. How can he embrace something that is effectively a parasite? How can he care for an artwork that takes control of his body and life and risks his freedom? What is that difference between Dark and Krad that lets him do this?

 _You know what it is_ , Krad says. _He does not resist. They work as one_.

But, that is not true either. They do not always agree or Niwa would hate him like Dark did or Dark wouldn't grab hold whenever he could and disrupt Niwa's life. Working with Krad would only lead to death faster and the deaths of innocents around him.

 _Who is to say that all this suppression hasn't made us what we are?_ Krad says, insidious as ever. _'It isn't fair.' You've thought it before. Face it, you want to make everyone who has such simple, happy lives suffer._

Not true.

 _Inside you are rage at your core. You hate. You fear. You wish to lash out._

Krad lies.

 _You make me what I am because we are the same. Satoshi._

Satoshi digs his fingernails into his forearm and focuses on the pain. He breathes even breaths and focuses on the physical ache even as his nails draw blood, and he does not hear whatever Krad says next. Krad is a part of him, but he is not Krad. Niwa is not Dark either. And that is a problem he is unsure how to address. Because Niwa is so ignorant of how their world works that he could almost be called innocent. Almost.

 _It is only complicated because you make it so._

If only it was as simple as Krad made it out to be.

Jealousy

It was only a matter of time before Satoshi's self-sabotage led to illness. He was prone to periodic illness anyway. He hadn't expected to end up at the Niwa household. The only good thing he could say about it was that because he was feeling sick, Krad was keeping as far from his consciousness and physical discomfort and wasn't paying attention.

The more he saw of the Niwa, how they interacted and confronted him, the more Satoshi felt…unsettled. Everything about the Niwa was vibrant. The home felt lived in and cherished. The elder Niwa had strong personalities, and the nosiness he expected, but none of the outright hostility he had expected. They weren't fools—there were enough cameras and traps in the home that it dissuaded him from snooping. It was still ridiculous that he was in their home. Satoshi couldn't imagine Rio ever allowing a Niwa to pass through her doors even if Satoshi had insisted it. It was an antithesis to the home Satoshi had grown up in. Loud, warm meals, blatant affection, and rampant emotions.

It should have been comical.

Instead it was a mix of heartwarming and depressing.

Satoshi watched Daisuke sleeping on a futon on the floor. How could he sleep so peacefully in the same room as someone who had tried to kill him? "You have no self-preservation instinct," Satoshi murmured. It took him a minute to realize he was smiling when he said it and it made him feel a bit sick. He was truly compromised. The whole Niwa family were people now, not shadow cut outs and stories to build anger and hate against. He hadn't been lying when he told Niwa that the things that were important got destroyed.

He even remembered Rio having him destroy his early paintings when they started growing sparks of life, and once, when he was very little, taking a favorite toy because he could not show any attachment for anything. Ironic since in the end he'd been attached to her, and inevitably it got her killed. It was only a matter of time before it happened to Niwa too.

Called by his emotions, Krad curled against his consciousness. He was subdued, surprising considering their location.

Satoshi replayed how Niwa touched his family casually, how his mother had voiced her concern for his safety loudly, how Niwa's father—an outsider as he had said—still showed insight and care for his son, how Dark's previous vessel hadn't shown any of the prejudice that undoubtedly was in his thoughts for the sake of his grandson's feelings. How no one viewed Dark as a curse, but something to be proud of. Not an unwilling duty to anyone but Niwa, and even he had begun to embrace it. He was a Niwa through and through even if he didn't understand it yet.

Niwa's life was everything Satoshi had wanted as a small child before it settled into him that his duty was inescapable.

He should hate Niwa.

He couldn't.

Krad reached out and Satoshi felt his stomach drop. His hand went for the ring that Niwa's father had given him, but Krad's mind wasn't angry or destructive. _You are too close_ , Krad said, for once only a statement rather than an accusation.

It figured that the first time Satoshi and Krad had an emotional understanding it would be because of Niwa Daisuke. He'd been angry. He'd been frustrated. He'd been scared. In this moment he could only feel acceptance and fondness.

His body shifted, but Krad didn't grab for control. It was almost painless, like giving in to the inevitable. It should feel like a loss, but it feelt too right to be a bad thing. They were in limbo and he wasn't sure which of them was speaking when they said "I never wanted to be deeply connected to you."

"Daisuke…" _Dark._

Their emotions were in harmony. It would probably never happen again, but the melancholy mix of warmth and jealousy swirled and redoubled between them. "I.." _I've always_ … "I've always envied you."

He lifted Daisuke into the bed, Krad's body moving with an ease that Satoshi's lacked. Daisuke slept through it, curling innocently into his pillow.

If their places had been swapped… if their roles… Krad backed away from their body, and Satoshi couldn't help but pluck a feather to leave behind.

 _Sentimental and foolish,_ Krad said without his usual bite. _You know what needs to be done_.

 _"I would have thought you would want me to use his delusions of a possible friendship against him."_

 _You have changed,_ Krad said like it explained everything.

 _"I haven't given up on catching Dark._ "

 _But never killing._ Krad sighed. _Far too sentimental. How you survived childhood will forever confuse me._

Satoshi shook his head and stepped away from Niwa's…Daisuke's bed. The window was a convenient exit.

"Why didn't you try to fight?" Satoshi asked as their wings carried them toward home.

 _Despite your high expectations of me,_ Krad said caustically, _I am capable of holding a temporary cease fire._

"…I don't think I will ever understand you."

 _Your frail human self couldn't manage it_.

"I won't let you kill them," Satoshi said.

Krad snorted. _You've stopped rejecting me though._

"…in the end, we are the same."

Tomorrow the boxes would return, and emotions would be set away in them and only let out in careful amounts. He thought about what he said to Niwa Kosuke. "I am just me."


	3. This is What We Do

_AN: To contrast with Rio and Satoshi's story, snippets of Daisuke's childhood._

Happiness

Emiko lifted Daisuke into the air and he squealed happily. Pudgy baby fingers grabbed for her hair and Emiko whisked him out of reach. "Ah, ah, that hurts. No pulling hair."

"Gah!" Daisuke wiggled and Emiko laughed.

"Look at you, trying to be an escape artist already."

"It's in the blood," Daiki said, coming up behind her silent as ever. He wiggled a finger and Daisuke latched onto it, dragging it to his mouth to slobber over. "Someone's energetic today."

"I know! When I set him down he keeps crawling wherever he can reach."

"He is growing fast." Daiki smiled. "Getting into trouble just like you used to."

"Papa!" Emiko rolled her eyes.

"You did." Daiki's eyes sparkled with mischief. "You used to try and break into the cabinets to steal sugar lumps and always found new toys before I could gift them to you." He shook his head. "Daisuke's practically calm in comparison."

"I hope not, he should be trouble if he's going to be a thief." As if to prove her point, Daisuke wiggled and tried to get back to the ground. "Ah, ah, ah! You're not getting out of my arms that easily. Nope, you're trapped! Sentenced to tickling!" Daisuke squealed as Emiko scritched her fingers against his belly. When she stopped, Daisuke giggled and calmed in her arms. She looked up to see her father smiling at them both. "What?"

"I'm glad to see you happy, Emiko." Daiki rested a hand on her shoulder. "You smile from the heart these days. It makes me glad."

Emiko's smile went lopsided and a little sad. "I am happy. I wasn't unhappy before though."

"I know," Daiki said. He gripped her shoulder supportively before leaning in to kiss her forehead, then Daisuke's. "I think I still have some of the baby toys from when you were little, the ones that helped with dexterity. I put them in one of the basement rooms."

Emiko leaned against him for a moment. "Thank you, Papa."

"Of course."

Bedtime Stories

"The Phantom Thief Dark, held the statue above his head," Emiko said to Daisuke. She held a plush rabbit above her head. Daisuke giggled and waved his hands at her from where he lay in his crib. "The police on the ground waved fists and shouted 'We'll get you, Dark!' But Dark was already flying away with the statue in hand." Emiko made the rabbit soar over Daisuke's head. He grabbed for the trailing ears. "And then—"

"Emiko!" Kosuke interrupted from the doorway. He looked upset, so Emiko stopped trailing the rabbit over Daisuke's head and turned to him.

"Yes, Kosuke?"

"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to tell Daisuke about Dark!" He bustled into the room to stand with her next to Daisuke's crib. Daisuke blinked up at him and made content cooing sounds.

Emiko sighed. "They're bedtime stories, Kosuke. My father used to tell them to me all the time when I was growing up. They're not going to do any harm."

"There are a million stories to tell that have nothing to do with Dark," Kosuke fretted.

"He's not even old enough to understand what we're saying," Emiko said, but she knew that this wouldn't matter to Kosuke. She'd only agreed to hide the truth after weeks of arguing and she still thought that there was nothing wrong with Daisuke thinking that they were fairytale sort of stories. Kosuke hadn't agreed.

"I want him to have a normal childhood," Kosuke said, putting one hand into the crib so Daisuke could grab onto it and drag it into his mouth. "I want him to be his own person, not think that he was born just so Dark could manifest in him."

Oh, Kosuke…" Emiko put an arm around Kosuke's waist and leaned against him. "I love Daisuke for his own sake."

"I know. It's just…stories of Dark…I don't…" Words failed him. Given time, Kosuke was the most eloquent speaker out of the family, but in the moment, when emotions filled him he often had trouble putting words to how he thought or felt. They'd had this discussion before though. Emiko knew what he meant.

"We'll make sure he always knows that he's our son first, even after Dark appears."

Kosuke nodded, the hand that Daisuke wasn't sucking on sliding down to grip her hand around his waist. "I know you mean well, but maybe some other story, ok?"

"I…don't really know any other stories," Emiko admitted with a sheepish smile. "Papa told stories about Dark and mother or grandfather and grandmother when I was a child."

"Maybe…" Kosuke hesitated and Emiko squeezed his hand. "Maybe I could do bedtime stories. Just for a little while."

"Of course, Kosuke," Emiko said, feeling both happy and a bit sad. Kosuke had plans to study art history and research to better fit in the family. They both knew that eventually those studies would outgrow what was available at Azumano and the surrounding cities. He'd end up missing chunks of Daisuke's life, and he felt they would be worth it in the end, but Emiko knew he loved Daisuke just as much as she did and he wanted to make as memories with the time they had together as he could before he reached that point.

"Thank you," he said.

Emiko kissed him on his cheek and took a step back. "I guess I'll let you get on with story time," she said, rightly guessing that he'd be more comfortable telling stories without her at his shoulder—at least at the start. She'd ease her way in so that she could collect stories to tell Dai-chan in the future.

"Thank you, Emiko," Kosuke murmured.

As she inched out the door, she heard Kosuke's quiet voice start in with, "Once upon a time there lived a man with three sons…"

Climb

Emiko carried Daisuke down into the basement. He clung to her with pudgy fingers, looking around with wide eyes. He hadn't been down here yet. There was none of the instinctive fear for shadows or cobweb-filled corners that many toddlers had. Instead he looked curious. Good. A budding thief shouldn't fear the dark.

The basement room Emiko took him to was one she had worked on since before he was born. It had a padded jungle gym, high platforms and narrow ledges, and narrow crevices to explore; in short the perfect training ground for a baby on its way to becoming a phantom thief.

She set Daisuke down in the middle of the room and watched him stand on unsteady legs. He'd only just started walking.

Most parents dreaded this stage of childhood development when their baby suddenly is trying to access everything it can reach, or find a way to reach it if it can't.

Emiko had been waiting for this day.

Daisuke wobbled along the padded ground, padded in case he slipped, padded to keep him from injuring himself when he was so small. He smacked one of the lower bars of the jungle gym and looked surprised when it made a muffled thump instead of some other sort of noise.

Emiko took out Daisuke's favorite toy from her pocket—a tiny teddy bear that was losing an eye from enthusiastic chewing—and set it on one of the raised platforms. Daisuke's eyes followed it through the air. She crouched down by his side and ruffled the soft red spikes of hair that were beginning to grow long enough to flop into his eyes.

It was time to learn what every toddler wanted to but was discouraged from doing.

Emiko gave Daisuke a gentle push toward a low foot hold and said, "Climb."

Locks

"Kaa-saaaan!" Daisuke whimpered at the closed door. It had been closed for ten minutes now, and he was all alone in there with boxes and old, broken objects. Usually by now Emiko would have bent her rules a little, but on the other side of the door, she stood firm.

"Dai-chan, I'm right here," she said, keeping her voice calm and even. "All you have to do is unlock the door and I'll be right here to give you a big hug, okay?"

Daisuke stood on tiptoe but even then the door handle was out of reach. It was locked though, so that was a bigger issue than being too short to touch the handle. He sniffled and wiped away frustrated tears. "I don't wanna," he said.

"Dai-chan, you have to do this." Emiko's voice went soft and soothing. "You know how to open locks. I'm right here okay?"

It wasn't okay, but Daisuke had the feeling that if he indulged in a tantrum over it Emiko might not stay right outside the door talking him through this, but would tell him that it wasn't fitting for a thief to get upset over a locked door and leave him to have a time out. He didn't have the lock picks he practiced with. There was just the scary room of junk and the big, heavy door.

"I know you can do it, Dai-chan," Emiko said.

Daisuke balled his fists and looked around the room. There was a box he could stand on. It was heavy, too heavy to pull, but if he pushed and pushed and pushed with all his might it slid across the basement floor. He leaned against it, panting. When he crawled on it, he could reach the door handle and see the lock. Then he remembered he didn't have lock picks and almost started crying again. "Kaa-san…"

"A thief uses his surroundings to his advantage," Emiko said from the other side of the door, repeating lessons that she'd gone over before.

Daisuke sniffed. The rest of the things in the room were broken or stored things, but lock picks were wire and the broken things could have wires. The room felt very small all of a sudden and Daisuke scrambled for the boxes, looking for anything he could use. Sticking out of a broken electronics box was the thin wire of a radio controlled car, and a box a few feet from that had papers held together with paperclips. Daisuke's fingers closed over the finds greedily, pulling them into shapes he could use. In a flash, he was back on the box and using his improvised picks as fast as he was able. It took over a minute for the tumblers to turn over and by then his hands were starting to shake because if he had his picks he would have been done forty seconds sooner. He tried the handle. It opened easily on well-oiled hinges. As promised, Emiko was right outside.

She smiled. "Good job, Dai-chan," she said holding her arms open.

Daisuke's face crumpled as he burst into tears and ran blindly into her arms.

"Shh, shh." Her warm hands stroked his hair flat. "I knew you could do it," she said. "You're growing up so fast."

Steal

"I can't believe Yuu-kun stole Noriko-chan's lunch money!" Takeshi growled, slamming his own lunch down onto the desk. On the other end of the room, Noriko was surrounded by her friends all talking loudly about how awful it was and how Yuu-kun was stupid and mean. Yuu-kun had been sent to the principal's office.

Daisuke took out his chopsticks and frowned down at his panda-shaped rice balls and colorfully arranged vegetables. "Noriko-chan had a packed lunch today," he said. "Yuu-kun doesn't have a lunch."

"Dai~suke!" Takeshi grumbled like he did when he thought Daisuke was being stupid. "Stealing is wrong! It's Noriko-chan's money."

Daisuke poked at a bright red slice of tomato, nudging it around the corner of his lunch box. He thought about home and Emiko talked about being a thief like it was something great and wonderful. Takeshi, the few times theft had ever come up, had gone into rants about how it was horrible and awful and you'd go to jail and probably deserved worse. Takeshi's dad was a police officer though, so Daisuke supposed he was biased. But seeing how the class had taken Noriko's side over Yuu's showed that maybe Daisuke was the one with a different outlook on thieves than most people had. He took a bite of salad, chewing as Takeshi shoveled rice in his mouth and grunted about jail and bad paths like he was repeating someone else's words. "But what about stealing something if someone else stole it first?" Daisuke asked, thinking of the little girl with the teddy bear a few weeks ago.

"Then they're both stealing and should both go to jail," Takeshi said like it was a stupid question.

"But what if the person stealing from the first thief is stealing to give the thing back?"

"Well…well…" Takeshi stopped shoveling food and frowned. "Well they're both still thieves, but maybe the second one doesn't need jail cuz he's giving the thing back. But only if he's giving it back to the person it belongs to. If he keeps it he's just a bad guy and should get arrested."

"…Okay." The mansion Daisuke had taken the teddy bear from had had a collection of children's toys that had been lost over its fence. He'd felt angry then, seeing so many things lost that someone had loved. It made him wonder if he stole other things if it would make people sad like the little girl had been sad.

But he had to wonder if it was wrong for Yuu to steal from Noriko too, because Noriko hadn't needed the lunch money but Yuu had.

Takeshi thought it was wrong. Daisuke wondered what his mother would think. By the end of lunch, he was sure that sometimes it was okay to steal. He just wasn't sure if he knew what those times were.

Games

There were games that Daisuke played with his mother and grandfather that he wasn't allowed to play with anyone else. There was 'Guess Who' where they mimicked voices and tried to convince each other they were someone else—Daisuke wasn't very good at it, but he was getting better. Emiko fooled him more often than Daiki because she chose people who could actually be visitors and held conversations with herself. There was 'Escape' where he was in a room and had to find a way out—only sometimes it wasn't a game but a test and he didn't like when it was a test because it wasn't fun anymore.

There was 'Climb' where he got to climb up things any way he could think of to reach a goal. Every time he got faster at it, there was some sort of treat baked up by his mom that made it worth it.

'Copycat' was trying to look and move like someone else. Daisuke liked that because Emiko would point out people when they went to the park or the store and mimic how they walked and held their shoulders and smiled and it was like she almost was that person even if she looked nothing like them.

It took a while to realize no one else played these games. Takeshi got angry the one time Daisuke spent an afternoon playing 'Copycat' of him. Most people only had one voice, and climbing things wasn't allowed in school.

The closest to a game Daisuke played at home that his friends played was 'the floor is lava,' but even that was kind of easy compared to the obstacle course he ran through every day. Chairs and tables didn't suddenly become holes in the floor or walls with hidden trigger doors. The floor didn't set off a loud alarm if you accidentally touched it, and you never got shocked if you forgot to cut a wire wrong.

They were all fun games when he was little, but they weren't as fun now. The rules got harder and the tests were more often even though there were still warm cookies if he shaved off a second of his climbing or he figured out a new trick to get through the obstacle of the day.

"Do I have to?" Daisuke asked, eight and a half and not in the mood to play 'Guess Who' because he'd rather play a board game or draw a picture like he did when he visited a friend's house.

Emiko knelt at his level and said, "It's important to play this game. We can play something else today, but we still need to play this one sometimes too."

But she didn't say _why_ it was important. Daisuke knew that it had to do with stealing because he knew his mother and the rest of the world saw things differently about that sort of thing. But he didn't know why it mattered if _he_ knew it. Daisuke didn't plan to steal anything.

"It's important," Emiko repeated. "Do you understand that?"

Daisuke didn't. But he said yes anyway because he knew that was what she wanted him to say.


End file.
